


the girl who believed in fairytales

by coalitiongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Soulmates, Swan Queen Week, Swan-Mills Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-09 11:23:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3247826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Canon Divergence AU and Soulmate AU for Swan Queen Week. </p><p>“I think I thought I might find someone to…” Emma swallows and Regina is silent, listening more carefully than she should be to someone who shouldn’t matter. “Anyway, this whole soulmate business is a crock. I’m not going to wind up with some asshole just because of a tattoo.”</p><p>[the one where Henry is kidnapped as a baby and Regina and Emma have other names on their ankles]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the girl with no family

**Author's Note:**

> This is getting ridiculously long, so I'm posting it in two parts. It was originally written for the soulmates prompt, but this section of it is mostly canon divergence, so you get one chapter today and the other tomorrow.
> 
> Oh, and in this particular fic, Regina is a lesbian, but otherwise (or regardless, lol, it's never explicitly specified either way) it's canon compliant up until the Save Henry flashbacks.

Regina’s mark had come in when she was seven. It had begun to darken when she’d been only four, and she’d spent more than enough time tripping over her feet trying to see the name that would eventually be written on the back of her ankle. Her _soulmate_. She’s going to have someone to love, maybe a handsome prince or some dashing knight and someone who understands her, who thinks like her and wants the same things as her. She can’t wait to meet him.

 

When she can finally make out the name in tiny print, she smiles even wider. It’s a good name. She runs to show Daddy and he smiles at her and cautions her gently, as he always does when she gets too excited about it, “A soulmate is not a guarantee.” 

 

“But I know I’ll meet him someday! And he’ll be perfect for me!” She spins around in her dress, the purple fabric flying up to surround her. “Of course we’ll fall in love!” 

 

Daddy smiles again, this time with a hint of sadness, and says, “I hope so.”

 

* * *

 

She sees Mother’s mark for the first time when she’s seven, too, and when she’s older and understands Mother better she realizes that it had been intentional. She’d been too vocal about her soulmate from the moment she’d seen his name, had run to the maids and the servants to ask them if they’d known anyone else with that name, and Mother had had to punish her for telling anyone the name hidden under stockings or shoes at all times.

 

They’re bathing in the caverns down the road, Mother with a sharp eye on her, and Mother stands to dry herself off, turning away from the pools. Regina squints at the name on her ankle as it stands out in stark black against Mother’s pale skin, like a long bruise or a cut with dried blood along the edges of it. 

 

It’s long. It’s much longer than _Henry_ is, and Regina speaks before thinking- a habit Mother is trying to make her drop- “Your soulmate isn’t Daddy.” 

 

“Oh, goodness.” Mother twists around before Regina can make out anything but the first and last letters, an _R_ and an _N_. “You shouldn’t have seen that.” Her mouth is set cruelly, the way it is when she’s about to teach Regina a lesson, and Regina flinches back against the opposite wall of the pool. 

 

“A soulmate is a fairytale,” Mother says, her voice warm and coaxing, and Regina is drawn back to it, climbs out of the water to wrap herself in a towel and cross her left ankle up where she can see the name on it. Mother puts an arm around her shoulder and Regina leans in, comforted. “Little girls who get caught up in fairytales are left brokenhearted. There’s no future in waiting for _someone_ when you can be great instead. What if your soulmate was some poor farmer, Regina?” 

 

Regina imagines it for a moment, a farm to herself and a horse to ride and someone to ride beside her. She’s careful not let the smile creep onto her face. Mother gets unhappy when she doesn’t dream greater than happiness. “I am to be powerful,” she says, and feels Mother squeeze her shoulder in approval. 

 

* * *

 

And then something changes. Regina grows older and _she_ changes, fills out her dresses better and her face loses its last baby fat. Mother urges her to stand taller, to smile just so, to find poise and composure instead of the gawkiness of adolescence. Gone are the old traditional clothes of Daddy’s family, Mother disapproving as she offers the clothing of the royalty in this land- _You don’t want the princes here to think you’re different, do you? And you know how mothers talk_. Daddy still calls her his _reinita_  when Mother isn’t around to frown on it, looks at her with pride and sadness she doesn’t understand.

 

She turns heads when she goes to town now, leaves boys in the village square breathless as Mother smiles tightly and raises her chin around them. Regina follows suit, disinterested in the whole affair. The boys are handsome, she supposes, but her heart doesn’t flutter when she sees them and she can’t grasp the enthusiasm of the village girls around them. _Only my soulmate, maybe_ , she wonders.

 

But instead her eyes are drawn to a girl fetching water from the town well, bent over with her collar low and her buttons open in a way that leaves Regina warm and uncomfortable.Mother glances at her. “What’s wrong?” 

 

“Nothing,” Regina says quickly, and flushes until the girl stands again. She winks at Regina and Regina flushes even harder. “I’m feeling a bit ill. Couldn’t we go home?” 

 

“Regina,” Mother says with disapproval. “Never let your weaknesses slow you down. You are royalty. And royalty never wavers.” 

 

Royalty doesn’t waver when Regina goes to balls and watches the girls instead of the boys, slips off into the rooms where they congregate and sees pretty girls kissing like it’s nothing so immense. The word on Regina’s ankle burns like a burden, suddenly, like a weight dragging her down as she puts on her best smile and breaks away from girlish conversations to dance with the men again.

 

She is meant to love a man. Mother’s ambitions aside, it’s a boy’s name on her ankle, and no matter how little attraction she feels toward them, it’s the only future ahead of her. The only way she can be free is with her soulmate. 

 

She chooses freedom over the floating sensation in her heart around old girlfriends and her prettiest attendants, and she doesn’t allow herself to regret it.

 

* * *

 

Daniel is sweet and kind and she loves him as best as she can, kisses him and dreams of their future together even if it isn’t her childhood dream. Even if the name on her ankle isn’t Daniel’s and she still yearns for someone softer and differently shaped. Daniel would do anything for her and she only wants to love, to have people to love and maybe even sweet-cheeked children one day to adore as well. 

 

Leopold is a king who looks at her like she’s another hired help, a babysitter for his daughter and a warm body for his bed, and she’s nauseous the moment he touches her waist for the first time. Like a _husband_.

 

She looks at his ankle after he passes out one night in spiteful impotence. It’s all she _can_ do around him, violate his privacy as he violates all she is. Looking at someone’s name is like…pulling down their pants in the street as she’s seen small children do, an exposure that just isn’t done. Leopold has taken enough of her.

 

She sees the name on his ankle and feels sick, stumbles from the room to her own and forgets all about poise and composure. It doesn’t say _Eva,_ not for the wife he still extolls to Snow White’s beaming face. It says _Cora_ , and Regina makes it to the balcony before she vomits over the edge, sinking down and pressing her face into her knees.

 

Mother’s soulmate had been someone else. She remembers the name, long with an _R_ at the beginning and a… “Rumplestiltskin,” she says aloud.

 

“You summoned me?” he asks from behind her, and his eyes flicker from her pallid face to the balcony edge that hadn’t escaped her sickness.

 

“No,” she says, her thoughts moving rapidly. There are whispers about how little a soulmate can mean, whispers she’d only begun to listen to once she’d determined that her own soulmate would be nothing so magical. They say there are soulmates who are never meant to be in love, that there are soulmates who are paired with people who don’t share their name. That the power of soulmates backfires more often than not. There are stories of soulmates with more than one name on their ankle.

 

They’re all laughed off by most, comfortable in their lives where they’ve chosen their soulmates or are left with good memories of them, but Regina wonders.

 

She’s always longed for the extraordinary, and now it’s all the hope she has.

 

* * *

 

She has no soulmate. A fairy comes to her and promises to find the one she’s meant to love and she follows pixie dust that seems to split and fade away as soon as they’re away from the castle. “He may be dead,” Tinkerbell offers. “Or perhaps he hasn’t yet been born. Still, there are other fish in the sea.” 

 

She dismisses her and sinks into new grimness. Daniel is gone. Her soulmate is a farce. She still watches the women of the marketplace with longing, but she resists the urge to act on any of it, has learned from long-ingrained habit that there’s no use to it. She has never been meant for anything but miserable _almost_. 

 

Gone are the days of her childhood when she’d run around dreaming of a handsome soulmate to whisk her off, of love and family and everything she’d once believed she would receive. Now she’s only a queen in a tower, plotting and gaining power to have the last vestiges of happiness she can find. She may never have love, but she will have vengeance and she will have freedom if it is the last thing she does.

 

* * *

 

She chases Snow White for years, watches her meet her own soulmate and hates her even more. The name on her ankle is David, Regina knows, because Snow had whispered it in her ear one day as a child like a secret only for them. And Snow falls in love with Prince James, only to discover that he’s really a shepherd named David.

 

_Of course. Of course Snow would have this_. And so they battle on, and there are curses and wars and Regina finally, in the end, forced to concede this single battle. She will never concede the war. The war will not end until Snow White is dead and Regina is victorious.

 

She lasts in bitter exile, prepares a curse to take her to a simpler land, and for a moment- a terrible, hopeful moment- she remembers Tinkerbell’s pixie dust failing. _Another realm_ , she wonders. _A place we couldn’t cross to before_.

 

No. She’s done with the silly affectations of the past, and she won’t dream again.

 

* * *

 

She has her town, lives an empty, frozen life in it, and it feels less like a victory when there’s no one to be quashed. When everyone is unhappy but no one knows there’s possibility for anything else. Regina knows well that the absence of hope can never be despair; it’s only its presence that provides true misery.

 

Regina remembers hope, has it now, and with it comes dread that this is all her victory means. That she may never be happy again.

 

She sees the baby for the first time and falls in love in an adoption agency office in Boston. _Henry_ , she names him, in an act of defiance. Destiny will have no bearing on her anymore, not when she names her own destiny and has found true joy at last. This boy is hers, her future, all she’s ever craved, and he is…

 

…the savior’s son, she understands, hanging up with Sidney. The savior had given birth to Henry, and Regina knows at once that destiny is having another cruel laugh in her face. She can’t keep this baby, can’t have the one person in this realm she loves already, not when he’s the key to her destruction.

 

_No, no, no._ Snow White’s grandson in her arms, gurgling at her until she wants to sob and scream and change the world again, to crush everyone who would stand in their way. She wants to demand absolution, to swear off any bad habits- she would surrender Snow White, if only it meant that Henry would be hers- but she knows already that she’ll lose him. Lose everything, if she keeps him.

 

There are tears slipping from her eyes when she signs off on new papers at the adoption agency, and the social worker says gently, “There is a seven-day waiting period before the new parents will bring him home, though they will meet him today. I won’t be processing these papers for a few hours.” She barely hears him, her eyes glued to Henry’s smiling eyes that focus on her face when she stares down at him. “Many new parents think they can’t do it at first. You aren’t any different than them.” 

 

But she is. She’s being sent a sharp message by destiny, a warning that nothing she meddles in to change her future will end well. Henry will find another home, new people to love who aren’t her, and they’ll both be safer for it.

 

She walks backward out the door, her eyes still glued to Henry, and makes it all the way to the parking lot before the hole in her heart aches so much that new resolve firms. _No_. Destiny will come for her, the savior may destroy her, but she refuses to be in this much pain until then. Henry is _hers_. Not the woman's who gave him up. Not Snow White’s. He’s her son and she’s going to fight for him.

 

She turns on her heel and marches back into the agency into chaos.

 

Her social worker is speaking loudly to one of the security officers, panicked, “I turned around for one second! And they were gone! The door never even opened!” 

 

“They didn’t come through here,” his secretary says, hanging up her phone. “They just…disappeared into thin air.” 

 

Regina’s heart stops. She clears her throat and the room falls silent. “Where is Henry?” she demands.

 

* * *

 

Henry is gone. The couple who had come to see him have vanished with him, so quickly that it seems impossible, and Regina mechanically answers the police’s questions and sits in the social worker’s office for hours, legs up under her and a pacifier she’d had in her purse in her hands. People work around her, have harried discussions and _it couldn’t have happened, none of this is possible, is this some kind of coverup_?

 

This is a land without magic, and yet magic seems the only answer. Magic, and another punishment for her defiance. Regina doesn’t return home for three days, curls up in a hotel room bed and allows herself to be weak, to hurt and sob without anyone to see, and she calls Gold and has cryptic conversations with him that explain nothing at all.

 

She has no help. She has no way of finding Henry. He’s gone.

 

She returns home brokenhearted, and even her zeal for governing has waned. It all seems dry, suddenly, her satisfaction in others’ unhappiness fading when she’s so lost on her own. There’s no one to exact vengeance upon. The couple who had taken Henry are a dead end, had swindled the adoption agency with false names and address, and a police officer had admitted on the phone that they have no idea if they’ll ever find Henry.

 

There’s nothing to fight for, not when Henry is gone and she wonders privately if it’s only herself she has to blame. (She never should have named him that.) There’s no happiness worth keeping when there’s no one to share it with. There’s nothing left but her quiet, mundane town empty of love, and the knowledge that the savior will come and liberate them all from it.

 

She can blame the savior, can hate her for bringing Regina to the decision to let Henry go for the three minutes she had, but it takes more energy than Regina is capable of to even muster up the fear and hatred and anticipation she feels toward this savior.

 

* * *

 

Emma Swan arrives at her door years later- she doesn’t know how many, she’d stopped counting after she’d lost Henry- with a broken car and a sheepish grin, and Regina looks at her and sees all their futures unraveling.

 

“I just need to call a mechanic and get my car towed there,” she assures Regina. “I’ll be out of your hair in no time.”

 

But unsurprisingly, a day turns to a week while the piece Michael Tillman needs is shipped in from Bangor. Emma lurks in Granny’s and Regina glares hard at her, makes certain that she knows she’s unwelcome and unwanted in this town. Short of carting her off to the sheriff’s station, there isn’t anything she can do to get rid of her–

 

She has her carted off to the sheriff’s station on trumped-up charges, and Graham offers her a job. Emma takes it to spite Regina and Regina rages in private as she hasn’t in twenty-eight years. The dullness of the years in Storybrooke- of the years without Henry- is replaced with screaming color, red leather jacket and garish yellow car and eyes that range from blue to green when they’re narrowed at her, full of the fire she’d seen in the eyes of a princess she’d fled years ago.

 

Regina despises her. Regina is furious with her. Regina wants her so desperately that it comes as no surprise when Emma storms into her office one morning and they wind up kissing instead of fighting, Regina up on her desk and Emma standing within her legs, hands pressed to her shoulder blades and fingers digging into her skin. She’d sworn she’d never do this with a woman, but Emma’s presence forces exceptions. Emma always forces exceptions

 

In a perverse kind of way, it’s the first time Regina’s been held since she’d been a girl, and she swallows back the softness and desire that comes with that need and bites at Emma’s neck instead, marks her conquest until Emma has her writhing against her fingers, fully conquered. Regina spins them around and pushes Emma against the wall, refusing to be taken again, and Emma sighs into her skin, presses her forehead against Regina’s shoulder and accepts Regina’s dominance.

 

They battle with words and lips and even fists, once, when Graham remembers and Regina has to dispose of him. It’s invigorating and it’s redefining her existence here, where she knows only loss; and sometimes it’s so exhausting that Regina wants to surrender, to give Emma the truth and sink into her arms and pretend this is all the capitulation to the savior that is needed of her.

 

Instead, she huffs at the way Emma laughs when she tugs her skirt back down one day in the coatroom outside of the town meeting her and snaps at her, “You aren’t my soulmate.”

 

“You’re not mine, either.” Emma tugs her closer again, leans over to suck at her earlobe until her legs turn to jelly and Emma’s holding her up against the wall yet again. If Regina hadn’t known how much they hate each other, she might’ve thought that it had been on purpose. “I spent years hunting for him,” she breathes against Regina’s ear.

 

_Him_ , Regina thinks, and her thighs tighten around Emma’s waist. “I said I wasn’t, but somehow I always wound up with men with some variation of the name. It’s kind of old-school,” she shrugs, and Regina wonders if he’s _here_ , in town, a fairytale with the wrong name. “I think I thought I might find someone to…” She swallows and Regina is silent, listening more carefully than she should be to someone who shouldn’t matter. “Anyway, this whole soulmate business is a crock. I’m not going to wind up with some asshole just because of a tattoo.”

 

“You don’t believe in soulmates.” She’s never heard of anyone who didn’t at least _pretend_ , not since her parents. The king had waxed eloquent on Eva and called her his soulmate all the time, and Regina had smiled so much more easily at those moments. No one seems to have the same doubt as she does, not until Emma.

 

“I don’t like it when anyone else- even some little mark on my ankle- tells me what to do,” Emma says, and maybe it’s just bravado but Regina thinks they could be just fine with Emma shuddering around her.

 

“I’ve noticed,” she says dryly, and attacks Emma’s lips with extra force, sliding back down to stand on her own two legs and press Emma forward toward the wall. Emma hoists herself up onto a shelf behind the coats and Regina curls her hands into the leather of her red jacket, pressing inward. Emma’s head drops so their foreheads are touching and Regina whispers, “I have a man’s name on my ankle.” 

 

“That’s fine. We’ll just…look out for men, then,” Emma says, waving vaguely toward the door. “If any of them hate me exactly like you do and can do that thing with their tongues, maybe I’ll give it a try.” 

 

“No. I don’t want…I thought there was something wrong with me for so long,” Regina stumbles on the words and Emma falls silent, her fingers brushing against Regina’s cheek and her thumb coaxing her back. It’s all done with such gentleness that they both blink, uncertain.

 

Emma breaks the silence at last. “You are one fucked up lady. And I’m not much better. And we’re pretty fucked up when it’s us being…” She shrugs. “Us.” But her eyes are fierce when she speaks next. “But there’s nothing wrong with _this_. You make your own decisions, okay? You choose what you want.” She kisses Regina, slides in closer to her, and Regina lets go of her jacket to slide her hands along Emma’s waist instead.

 

* * *

 

There are few breaks in their coming together, moments where they let something secret slip or their eyes aren’t quite as lustful as they are…something more. Regina doesn’t worry about it, not even when she wakes up one morning in a cold sweat at the thought of True Love’s Kiss. That will never happen with them. They aren’t soulmates and they _hate_ each other and maybe she just…needs a break from Emma. 

 

Emma makes things complicated and far too simple, makes her think of other endings to stories that can’t possibly go there. Emma is her second rebellion against the mark on her ankle, the one she’d determined she never would try when she’d been a girl who’d only noticed other girls and had had a boy’s name on her ankle.

 

Her first rebellion had shattered her, and she’s still picking up pieces of herself now from a nursery floor with _H-E-N-R-Y_ along the back of a crib untouched in ten years. She is half-made even when she has Emma to keep her alive, hollow glass that hasn’t yet been made complete. Her second rebellion, she thinks, may smash what she’s healed to pieces until she is nothing and irreparable. 

 

So she keeps her distance. She smiles coolly at Emma at Granny’s- as anyone would expect her to, as _Emma_ would expect- and avoids being alone with her, drives through town instead of walking, arranges meetings during Emma’s lunch, and closes herself into new isolation from her.

 

And Emma doesn’t accept it because of _course_ she doesn’t, she’s a menace who never does take well to subtle nudges, and it takes only two weeks before Emma is banging on her front door and shouting, “Open up! I have a warrant!” 

 

“You do not,” Regina says, opening the door a crack. Emma sticks her foot into the crack. Regina eyes it, like one might eye a spider before squashing it. Emma doesn’t move. 

 

“Fine,” she says, defiant. “I don’t. But what the hell is going on? Why are you avoiding me? Is this about August, because I _told_ you, he’s barely even a–“ 

 

“It isn’t about August.” Regina keeps the door open only as much as Emma’s boot forces it to be. Emma has never actually been in her house since the day they’d met. They’ve spent time in Mary Margaret’s apartment- in her _bed_ , once, because Regina is nothing if not thorough in her defilement of Snow White’s daughter- but she won’t allow Emma into her home again. 

 

She makes that vow just as she steps back and Emma slides into the foyer, eyes dark with frustration. “So what then? I thought we- we–“ She shakes her head, looking very lost, and Regina takes a step forward to her automatically. Which is yet another symptom of this being a Very Bad Idea.

 

Emma takes it for what it might have looked like and kisses her instead, and Regina falls into it and falls, falls, falls and forgets how to stand again.

 

* * *

 

She wakes up in the morning and Emma is gone, but her jacket is still draped on the arm of the couch and Regina’s throat tightens as she climbs the stairs to the upper floor. She doesn’t hear movement or the shower or anything that would indicate that Emma is there, but then she sees the door to the nursery open a crack and her heart stops. “Emma.” 

 

Emma is standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by soft pastels and a crib and a baby swing, a look of absolute horror on her face. Regina says again, her voice unsteady as it always is when she ventures into this room, “Emma.” 

 

“I was looking for the bathroom,” Emma murmurs, turning to stare at the room. Her eyes settle on the name across the crib and she looks pale and drawn. “Tell me you’re not some kind of child kidnapper. Or you don’t…I don’t know, have some creepy doll collection.”

 

“I had a son,” Regina says, and it’s a mark of how ridiculous Emma is that she wants to sob and roll her eyes at the same time. “For a very brief time.”

 

Emma’s face turns whiter still, sickly with a tinge of green. “You never said.”

 

_You never said, either_ , Regina thinks, but she doesn’t dare speak that out loud. “It was ten years ago.” 

 

Emma blinks and stumbles back a step. “What…did you give him up for adoption?” Her fingers are toying with the straps of her tank top and Regina takes an uncertain step forward. 

 

“I adopted him,” she corrects Emma, and Emma stumbles again. “I brought him to the adoption agency because I was having doubts- doubts I shouldn’t have had, I know that now- and he was kidnapped. The police were never able to track down the kidnappers. I’ve…” She wraps an arm around her waist and reaches out with the fingers of her other hand to brush dust off the crib. “I’ve only been in here once a year since then. On the date he was first given to me.” 

 

“I’m sorry,” Emma whispers. She shifts as though she’s about to take a step forward but never moves, her own hand reaching out to trace the letters on the crib. _H. E. N. R. Y._ Dust drops with the contact, spreading like grey snow on a sheet that had once been clean. “I…I had a son once too. Ten years ago. I was in prison- well, I know you had Sidney tell you all about that.” She licks her lips and Regina remembers Sidney asking what to print when she’d first been trying to chase Emma out of town. She’d forbidden him to mention the pregnancy. “I didn’t know what else to do. I wanted him to have his best chance.”

 

_His best chance_. Emma is standing in her baby’s room now, fingers running over his mobile now, and she still believes that the boy she’d given up is happy somewhere. Regina wants…improbable as it is, Regina wants to spare her feelings. Uncomfortable with her own discomfort, she demands, “Why are you telling me this?” instead, sharp and more hopeless than she’d ever meant for it to sound.

 

Still, Emma looks down, her shoulders moving up then down, and she mumbles into the carpet, “I just didn’t think we needed any more secrets between us.” 

 

Regina stands on one side of the crib and Emma on the other and suddenly it doesn’t seem like a good idea to keep any of it from her. _No more secrets._ Regina is keeping two, one more horrific than the next, and both of them gnaw at her like unfinished business in the face of Emma’s earnestness. 

 

She blurts it out very quickly, watching as Emma’s eyes widen more and more with every word. “It’s him. Henry. He was yours. I had Sidney look into the closed records and he got everything on you, your past and your name and then one day you were here.” 

 

By the time she’s done talking, Emma’s eyes are narrowing again, like she’s confused and angry at once, and Regina squeezes the wall of the crib with trepidation as she waits. “What? No. That’s…that’s impossible.” Emma shakes her head, long hair swinging with it. “What kind of sick joke…” She searches Regina’s face and Regina struggles to keep it open, to force her guard down so Emma can see only honesty there. “That kid was…” Emma's face crumples and she sinks to the floor, slides along the bars of the crib until she’s on her knees and bent over. 

 

Regina crouches down beside her. “Emma-“ 

 

Emma shoves her. It’s light, barely a tap, but enough that Regina falls back onto the floor. “You. You lied to me. You’ve been…manipulating me!” She inhales sharply. “How long have you been tracking me?” 

 

“It’s more complicated than that–“ 

 

“You knew who I was and never said a word?” Emma demands. She laughs suddenly, loud and near hysterics. Regina almost reaches for her again, but she can nearly  _feel_ Emma slipping away from her. Whatever had happened the night before, whatever strides had been made in this room of ghosts and might-have-been, it’s all gone now. “Is this all some kind of elaborate conspiracy?” Emma asks shrilly, and Regina seizes a chance. It’s all or nothing now, and victory has never seemed as important as holding onto this moment. She’d lost Henry for wavering. She can’t waver now.

 

“Yes,” she says urgently, mind made up, and Emma gapes at her. “Yes, it’s a conspiracy. There’s magic and there’s a curse on this town and you’re…you’re the only one who can save it. I thought you were a threat so I kept an eye out for you. I knew you’d come back and I thought Henry was part of it and I…” Her voice trails off as she notices suddenly that Emma is rising to a stand, backing away with angry tears in her eyes and clenched fists.

 

Emma is breathing hard, and Regina watches in horror as the tears glitter furiously. “Why does it end like this every time I find someone I–“ She turns and runs from the room and Regina goes limp on the floor, her head lolling back against a changing table with size one Huggies still in a sleeve behind her.

 

* * *

 

Emma is the one to avoid her from then on, the two of them reduced to angry snipes again and mistrust and hurt. Regina longs to have her again, to explain it all to her in some way that won’t end in devastation (but it _will_ , no matter how hard she tries, because her past is nothing to be shrugged off and if Emma ever understands who her family is…). They had been two women with the wrong names on their ankles, desperate only to have someone to hold, and now they’re…

 

…Rivals. Mayor and sheriff, queen and savior. One’s victory will mean the other’s destruction. And the curse will break, Regina is certain now. Emma will emerge victorious.

 

She wonders if she would dread its breaking more if she hadn’t already lost her happy ending ten years ago in Boston. And then again, on the floor of an abandoned nursery. Even hollow victory has lost its shine, and Emma, at least, might still have a future to salvage.

 

She hates Snow and her damned perfect life that comes to her despite all Regina’s efforts. Even now, Mary Margaret is sneaking around with David under Kathryn’s nose while Emma laughs with her and stays far away from Regina. 

 

Regina plots and schemes and maneuvers, dead set on destroying Snow before this curse comes to an close. Kathryn goes missing and Emma is caught up in the case, following lead after lead until David is a murderer, then exonerated, and then it’s only Mary Margaret in that cell.

 

Emma watches her with narrowed eyes and Regina refuses to give her anything, tell her anything more than scripted lines. She’d learned a long time ago how to put on a mask and keep it in place, to be queen and ruler and mayor and let no one see her indecision. She’d faltered with Henry in her arms, with Emma whispering in her ear, but no more. She will prevail.

 

Mary Margaret is proven innocent and Sidney takes the blame and Emma shakes with rage and threatens her and curses her all at once. Regina smiles.

 

+

 

And then there’s a banging at her door late at night, and even if it hadn’t been late and she hadn’t recognized the banging, she would have expected Emma behind the door. “What the hell do you want?” she demands.

 

Emma pushes past her into the house, pacing from the door to the staircase and back again. “August took me out to this tree. He said…oh god, he said all the things that Jefferson said.”

 

“Jefferson?” Regina repeats, worry fighting irritation. “When did you–“

 

“And you.” Emma stares up at her. “You can’t all be insane, right? This can’t be some kind of townwide insanity because August just _got_ here and he’s saying all the same things. He called me _the savior_.” She laughs brokenly. “What the fuck is wrong with this place?” 

 

“I told you. It’s a cursed town. It’s all true, Emma.” Regina can feel her heartbeat quickening against her skin and she knows. This is the moment of truth, the moment Emma will defeat her. She doesn’t want to fight anymore. She doesn’t want to…

 

She stalks toward Emma and whispers, “Kiss me,” and Emma does, Emma puts her hands against her face and kisses her in a mess of tears and bewilderment and fear, and the shockwave throws them apart as the curse breaks.


	2. the boy with no name

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's part two, for Soulmate AU day of Swan Queen Week! Thank you so much for all your kind words and encouragement for everything I've written this week. I think I managed 25k words over the past two weeks by being an antisocial hermit, lmao, and I'm very glad that they didn't go to waste. <3

Emma tears Victor away from her as she stands before an angry mob and Emma holds her hand a little too long when she’s locked into a cell after. Emma runs across the room to help her up after the wraith attacks her and then Emma pushes her aside and falls into a portal to protect her.

 

Regina doesn’t remember her life before _Emma, Emma, Emma_ , Emma who she loves and now the world knows, and David seems torn between cutting off her head or keeping her safe because of it. She reclaims her magic and attacks him when he storms into her house and he stares down at her in alarm. 

 

She snaps threats at him and he snaps threats at her and it’s so _useless_  because she has nothing to fight for anymore. She has her life and she has no family, no friends, no Emma or even Snow to fixate on and that’s…nothing.

 

David sees something in her face and his own softens a bit and Regina suddenly recognizes Emma in him, in his idiotic (idiotic, idiotic, lovable Emma) belligerence and his uncertain eyes, and she takes a step back as he speaks. “You love my daughter,” he says. “I want to bring her home. Does this really have to go like this?” 

 

She thinks of emptiness, of hopeless endings and marks on her ankle that don’t matter anymore. She thinks of losing Henry to what must have been another portal and love that becomes loss and life without direction. She thinks of Emma’s smile, bright and promising, of Emma in a coat closet whispering, _You choose what you want_ , and she chooses. “No,” she says.

 

* * *

 

They bring Emma home after some missteps- on Regina’s part, out of fear of her mother and Gold’s maneuvering- Snow with her, and there are awkward smiles and Emma keeping a distance with her eyes still soft on Regina. They kiss outside of Granny’s at the welcome back party and she feels _whole_ and good and right like she hasn’t since she’d been a girl, and then Mother comes to town and it isn’t anymore.

 

She’s isolated and betrayed and Emma brands her a murderer and betrays her, she’s isolated and lashes out and Emma has left town. She makes mistakes, one after another after another, and the wholeness fades into new regrets, new loneliness, and Emma returned but distant again. She trusts Snow. Mother is dead. 

 

Her earliest mistake in Storybrooke is in town, now Greg Mendell, and she’s strapped to a table and forced to endure a torture like she’s never felt before. _Emma_ , she begs. _Henry_ , she dreams. But in the end, she has only herself. 

 

Until it isn’t just her. Until she hears a pained cry she recognizes as Snow’s ( _Snow?_ she wonders, and hates a little less) and David firing at Mendell and Emma’s voice over a radio. “Emma,” she croaks.

 

Snow presses a hand to her brow. “We’re getting you out of here,” she says, and the look in her eyes is haunted now like Regina’s never seen it before. She can’t imagine what would have brought _Snow White_ to this, and she opens her mouth to ask.

 

And then there’s a shout from the radio, Emma speaking frantically, and Regina can barely make out the words. _Tamara_ , she hears. _A portal_. Emma sounds afraid and then there’s silence and Regina is done with portals taking away the people she loves. She musters up the last bit of energy she has, closes her eyes and teleports to Emma.

 

Emma, who is falling into a portal already, sliding into it as Tamara flees. Her eyes light up when she sees Regina- as though she isn’t about to vanish, as though there’s nothing that matters more than Regina free, that _idiot_ \- and Regina pitches forward into the hole with her.

 

They land on grass and soft dirt, Regina’s arms limp around Emma.

 

* * *

 

She can barely move, her nerves feel like they’re on fire, and opening her eyes seems an impossible task. She’s going to die here in some other realm, Emma unconscious beside her, and she supposes that she deserves it. She’s spent far too much time doing unforgivable deeds, every step forward now accompanied by one back, to expect absolution now.

 

There’s a gentle hand on her face, rough and calloused but very small, and her eyes snap open. A boy is sitting over her, eyes curious as he touches the burns on her forehead. He looks about ten, just a bit younger than Henry would have been now, and she swallows painfully- everything is painful- and croaks, “What is this place?” 

 

The boy doesn’t speak. Instead he scampers off and Regina’s resigned to lie in the silence until Emma shifts beside her. “You’re alive,” she says softly.

 

“For now,” Regina manages, her voice still hoarse and pained. “Thank you for coming for me.” 

 

“Mary Margaret pushed for it as hard as I did,” Emma says, sitting up. “You look terrible.” 

 

“Thanks.” 

 

Emma rolls her eyes, but she’s biting her lip, scanning Regina with growing concern. “I don’t know what I can do for you. Can you…will magic help?” 

 

“I’m not sure anything will help now,” Regina whispers. 

 

Emma leans down as though to kiss her, but instead she touches Regina’s lips, traces the burns like the boy had, and shakes her head. “I’m going to save you.” She closes her eyes and focuses, face screwing up and something like a wisp of breath tugging at Regina’s skin. Emma’s magic, untrained and so very mild, but still enough to reach her.

 

“Emma,” she says, jerking her hand up just enough to touch the other woman. “There’s nothing you can do. Please, just…” If she’s going to die like this, fade away in a mysterious realm where no one will know she’s gone, she wants it to be with Emma here, their resentments put aside for the final breaths of the Evil Queen.

 

“Wait,” Emma says, spinning around. “Someone’s here.” She raises her gun, spinning around toward the woods, and then lowers it. 

 

It’s the boy again, a coconut shell in his hands and his eyes determined even when he sees the weapon aimed at him. He points to Regina and then to the coconut shell, and Regina asks, “Will that help?”

 

He bobs his head up and down and Emma lowers her gun but doesn’t put it away, watching the boy with distrust and some of the same curiosity that he seems to have toward both of them. Their eyes meet, both of them challenging, both of them uncertain, and Emma abruptly turns and drops next to Regina again.

 

The boy comes over, and Regina sees that his coconut is holding water. “Thank you,” she murmurs. Emma helps prop her up and the boy tilts the coconut shell into her mouth, cool water sliding down her throat.

 

She swallows again and blinks, feeling the pain begin to fade and her muscles begin to cool. _Healing water_. The boy grins at her knowingly and she sits up, touching smooth temples and clenching her fist with no interference.

 

“Thank you,” she says again, and he bobs his head and scampers back.

 

She looks at him properly for the first time, caught up in his expression as he watches her. He still hasn’t spoken, but she sees the tilt of a victorious smirk on his face at how he’d managed to save her. It’s pride, shared between them already, and he chews on his lip as his eyes glow at her. He might be light-skinned if not for how dirty his face is, what might have once been jeans and a t-shirt are now ripped and ragged, and his feet are bare, but there’s something that looks like red ooze from his left one. “Come here,” she says.

 

“Regina,” Emma mutters. “We don’t even know where we are. He could be some kind of…evil wizard.”

 

“He’s a _boy_ ,” Regina says (yearning. always yearning), and Emma’s jaw tightens as she looks at him. She must see what Regina sees- a boy who could have been Henry, who’s lost and doesn’t speak but seeks to help them anyway- but Emma rejects it, takes a step back and looks stubbornly annoyed about the whole matter.

 

The boy stares at both of them, hesitant again, and then takes a step forward at Emma’s curt nod. “I’m Regina,” Regina says. “This is Emma.” 

 

He smiles and nods.

 

“Can you speak at all?” 

 

He shrugs and looks down in sullen embarrassment, a fragile child out in the woods, and Emma is the one to speak. Emma, who resents him already, but can never pass up a chance to help someone vulnerable. “Come on,” she says with confidence that is absolutely fabricated. “We’ll get you out of here.”

 

* * *

 

They have him take them to a stream and strip down to his underwear and Regina helps him scrub off his body while Emma tries glumly to clean the clothes. “I only started using different settings for darks and light this year,” she complains. “Why did I get laundry duty?” 

 

Regina ignores her and focuses on rubbing the boy’s skin until it’s pink and new, gingerly avoiding the redness on his left leg. “Have you ever had anyone…do you have a mother?” she asks finally.

 

He shakes his head, eyes fixed on her hand. “A father?” He shrugs at that like he doesn’t know what the answer is. 

 

Emma takes over, old training kicking in. “Have you been in these woods for a long time?” He shakes his head uncertainly. “And before that. Did you have people looking after you?” The same look as the one when Regina had asked about his father. Emma’s eyes narrow, seeing something new in his shifty eyes, an emotion that Regina recognizes at once. _Of course_. No one knows more about children fearing the people who love you than Regina and Emma. “Do you want to go back to them?” He shakes his head vigorously and her hands tighten on his clothing, squeezing until there’s dirt and soap and water running over her fingers.

 

They leave him alone for a moment to work on his private areas, Regina sitting on a fallen branch while Emma leans against the rock next to her. There’s tension between them again, returned with the boy’s absence, and Emma ventures finally, “What are we doing with this kid?” 

 

She still refers to them as a unit, and Regina breathes out her resentment and says instead, “He’s running away from someone. We keep him safe.” 

 

“And then?” 

 

“I don’t know.” She’s already making plans she _can’t_ , thinking about taking him back to their realm once they find a way home. She has a guest room beside the nursery. She could…

 

She would’ve thought she’d thrown the habit of impromptu adoption attempts after Owen, she thinks wryly. But this boy has already wormed his way into her heart, in his shining eyes and tentative movements and the way he’d held her hand as they’d gone down to the stream. She _can’t_.

 

She might. “What would make him lose his voice like this?” she wonders.

 

Emma taps her fingers against the rock, keeping them carefully behind her. “Trauma, maybe. Especially if it’s been long term. He might speak again in time- if he ever did- or with the right trigger. But Regina, we can’t…” She stops. The boy stares up at her from where he’s climbing over the rock to them, and Emma backs away as Regina helps him down.

 

Only his ankle is left now. Regina washes the area around it gently, frowning at the cut on it. It isn’t infected (She’d read every book about first aid in the Storybrooke bookstore when she’d first planned to adopt, and she’s an expert even now) but it’s well on its way, and they tear off a piece of Emma’s shirt to wrap around it. Emma is hovering again, keeping her distance but her eyes still on the boy, and he shuts his eyes tight and tucks his face into Regina’s shoulder as she dabs at the cut.

 

“Hey,” Emma says softly, suddenly. “Left ankle.”

 

Regina pauses, looks at the gash that slashes across where his soulmate’s name would be. “Oh.” 

 

The boy frowns at them, confused as though he’d never even known the significance of the left ankle, and Emma kneels down in front of them, meeting his eyes for the first time since he’d come to them in the woods. “You’re better off that way,” she says, and there’s a hint of a smile on her face for the first time since they'd gotten here. It’s still there when she looks at Regina, and Regina wonders if maybe some- not all, she doesn’t hope for all- has been forgiven.

 

They stare at each other and Emma says, “You know, if you hadn’t fireballed all those beans, we’d have a rescue party by now.” 

 

So they’re doing this instead. “You know, if your mother hadn’t been planning to lock me up for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t have fireballed those beans,” Regina responds evenly. “And if you hadn’t accused me of _murder_ , I might’ve been on your side all along.”

 

“Funny. I thought you were already a murderer,” Emma retorts, and there’s the tense dislike at last. Regina hadn’t missed it but it swells within her now, makes her want to–

 

The boy pulls away from her, so fearful that her heart wrenches at the look on his face, and he vanishes into the woods before they can give chase.

 

* * *

 

Regina doesn’t talk to Emma for a long time as they walk in the direction the boy had gone. Emma is stubbornly silent as well, the two of them stewing in decades of baggage that they’ve been avoiding since the curse had broken.  _Murderer_ , Emma thinks of her. Regina grits her teeth. A little boy had run from her today because Emma had called her a murderer and maybe it’s _true_ , but it isn’t who she is anymore.

 

Unless you count the mother whom she’d killed because Snow White had woven pretty words around the murder, and she’s sure that Emma doesn’t.

 

But she’s been trying. She’s gone astray but she’s been on her best behavior even when she’s been punished for it, and it stings that Emma would dismiss it so easily, use it against her when there’s a child in her arms.

 

Emma doesn’t say that she’s sorry, but she does say, “You should sleep. You’ve been through a lot that healing water can’t fix, Regina,” and it’s kind of like an apology. So Regina sleeps.

 

And when she wakes up, Emma is sitting at a campfire with the boy, speaking in a low voice. “So she cast this curse,” she’s saying, and Regina realizes that she’s talking about her. “Mary Margaret says it’s because she had nothing else. I think…Regina just wanted to be happy.”

 

The boy is listening, still a safe distance from Emma, and his eyes flicker to Regina. She says, “I can speak for myself,” but it’s grudgingly accepting. Emma has brought him back to them and he’s back to eyeing her with curiosity.

 

Emma says, “Kid? Do you have any reason to believe that Regina would hurt you?” Regina aches. He shakes his head vigorously, peeking over at her again. She breathes.

 

“Emma shouldn’t have said that,” Regina says. 

 

“No. I shouldn’t have.” Emma watches the boy instead of Regina, and he nods slowly and clambers back over to Regina, showing her where their makeshift bandage is already torn. She sighs at him and sits up, and he grins, sheepish and not quite as apologetic as he should be. But his hand is already resting on her arm, unafraid, and she finds she doesn’t mind the inconvenience.

 

Emma tears off another strip of fabric, still avoiding Regina’s eyes. Regina takes it from her, the two of them as silent as the boy, and they seal up the campsite and keep moving.

 

* * *

 

They stop when the boy begins to stumble, his injury and exhaustion slowing him down, and when they sit down, he lays his head against her shoulder and closes his eyes. Emma slips her coat off and drapes it over them both. “I’m going to go look for some food,” she murmurs.

 

“I won’t stop you.” Maybe there’s still some aggression in her voice, unrestrained even by the boy in her arms. Emma winces.

 

She takes a step forward, palms out. “Regina…what am I supposed to think? I _love_ you. There’s a whole town of people who can testify to that. And you also spent decades trying to hurt my mother and separated me from her–“

 

“I didn’t do that,” Regina feels obligated to point out. “I never meant to harm you…well, maybe once Rumple told me that you were the savior. But you were already gone.” She thinks she might’ve seen the baby then and kept her instead, and that raises all kind of worrying questions about their relationship now that she refuses to think about.

 

“Okay.” Emma presses her lips together and then releases them tiredly. “But I don’t know what I’m supposed to…I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about all of this. I don’t think I  _should_  get over it but…” She turns away. “What does it make me if I just don’t want to care?”

 

“You don’t have to bear your parents’ burden for them, Emma,” Regina says gently, and the simmering part of her that still hates clashes with the part of her that had seen Snow’s face when she’d awakened from torture and stays stuck to it, like magnets with opposing polarities drawing strength from each other at the same time.

 

“Don’t I?” Emma demands. “I have to–“ She stops at the sound of a low chuckle, twisting and reaching for her gun.

 

“Well, well.” A teenage boy walks into the clearing, an unpleasant smile on his face. Regina clenches the fist of her free arm and then releases it with a ball of flames in the center. “Mothers in Neverland.” 

 

“Neverland?” Emma repeats, spinning around to face the teen. Their boy starts in his sleep, his eyes shooting open as he looks around wildly. He sees the other boy and rises, fists up at him. “What’s next, Peter…” Her voice trails off. The older boy looks very amused. “Fuck.” She slumps against a tree and down to the ground.

 

Their boy runs at- Peter Pan, Regina supposes- with his fists still raised and Pan laughs. “Come now, boy, you don’t really think you can fight me? Isn’t that why you ran?” He vanishes and reappears behind the boy, yanking him to him by the scruff of his neck. “Are you expecting these two mothers to help you?” His eyes regard them with sneering knowledge, and he scoffs. “‘Mother’ may be a bit much. These two have never been mothers.” 

 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Regina says, eyes on the boy. He meets her gaze desperately, begging for her aid, and she stands, fireball still in hand. 

 

Pan laughs again. “I know who you are. Both of you. You abandoned your son.” He turns from her to Emma, who stares up at him with deadly eyes. “You didn’t _want_ him for your own selfish reasons. You know nothing about being mothers but silly little dreams that never made it to reality.” He drags the boy a little closer. “They aren’t going to save you, boy.” 

 

“Really.” Regina draws her hand back, but she wavers, uncertain that she can get to Pan without hurting the boy. He shakes his head wildly, defiant to the end as he urges her on, but still she hesitates.

 

The bullet blows through Pan’s other side and he releases the boy just as Regina slams a fireball into him. He jolts back, mouth gaping open, and vanishes again. 

 

The boy is shaking, fists still clenched and eyes terrified, and Regina takes a slow step toward him. Then another. Then another. He crumples into her arms, holds onto her and cries into her chest, and Emma puts her gun away and kneels beside them.

 

“You’ve been running from Pan.” The boy nods. “What does he want from you?” The boy presses a hand to his heart and Regina’s own heart sinks. 

 

* * *

 

It’s a certain kind of twisted joke. She’s spent her life taking hearts and now she’s protecting a boy from losing his own heart. But he doesn’t deserve it. He’s only a child, she thinks, watching as he tries and fails to catch berries in his mouth. Emma is succeeding only half the time, and the boy laughs silently when one hits her in the eye.

 

“Augh! I’m blind!” She slaps a hand to her eye and pretends to stagger around the campfire, nearly crashing into it before Regina yanks her back down. The boy laughs again, eyes bright, and Emma leans into Regina’s arm. “I see nothing funny about any of that,” she says primly, and he throws another berry at her. She catches it in her mouth and smirks expectantly at Regina.

 

Regina rolls her eyes at both of them and the boy comes over shyly, lifts her hand in his and puts a berry in it. She glares at both of them but they’re watching her with matching grins and she’s helpless against both. At least it’s a distraction from Pan.

 

She tosses the berry in the air and coaxes it toward her mouth with magic, letting it arc high in the air and land on her tongue. The boy looks impressed. Emma looks suspicious. “Nice throw,” she says in a tone that indicates that she doesn’t think it was nice at all.

 

The boy reaches past Emma to grab more berries and she flinches away from his touch. 

 

It’s barely noticeable, like a brief twitch and nothing more unless you’re watching for it, but Regina sees it and the boy sees it and the smile Emma had put on his face fades. He takes the berries and scrambles back to Regina, shoving them into his mouth and refusing to meet Emma’s gaze.

 

Emma stares into the fire for a moment and then bolts from their clearing, muttering some halfhearted excuse under her breath. The boy looks to Regina, helpless and distraught, and she strokes his arm soothingly. “It isn’t…I think Emma’s a bit afraid of you.” 

 

He points at himself in confusion, _Me?_ Then a questioning look, a finger pointed at her. _What about you?_

 

She smiles at him, a catch in her voice when she says, “I think you’re terrifying.” She leans over to kiss his forehead in reassurance, and he reaches out and grasps her hands in his. There’s a message here, a permanence already, and Regina can’t find the words to explain to him how he’s already broken them both. She can’t explain Henry and she can’t explain how she already loves this fierce little boy with frightening depth and need, holds onto his little hands and feels like she’s drowning.

 

He sleeps on the ground beside her, one hand still in hers, and she wonders for a moment what had happened in his childhood to make him as desperate to hold onto someone as she and Emma have been. He’d been fearful of Pan, been vehement about his desire to run from him, and had been unsure about his family. She can write that tragedy in an instant, piece together who she’d been and who Emma had been and take the parts of each that had mattered too much.

 

She responds to loveless years by seeking out love. Emma responds by fleeing blindly from it, searching out the most painful ways to avoid it. And this boy reacts as she does and Emma runs from them both. 

 

Still, it doesn’t take long for Emma to resurface. Regina expects her to be shamefaced and avoidant, regretting hurting the boy and running off, but instead her eyes are dark and angry and defiant as she sits back down at the fire, orange flames dancing in her eyes. “What the hell are we doing with him, Regina?” she demands without preamble. “We can’t just pick up a boy in the woods and…what? Bring him home? We don’t even know how to _get_ home. We don’t know if he’ll ever talk. What kind of fucked up parents would we be for him?” 

 

She doesn’t even think to exclude herself from the mix, _we_ and _parents_ and Emma in crisis. “Pan was right. We’re not mothers. We’ve never been mothers.” She laughs bitterly and Regina strokes the boy’s hand with her thumb, refusing to let Emma provoke her. “I lived through the foster system and I still- I wanted to believe that he’d be better off without me. And instead he lived…what? A week? before vanishing forever.” 

 

“You didn’t know that,” Regina murmurs. She lifts her free hand, about to reach for Emma, and then thinks better of it. “You were a teenager with no options and you gave your baby to someone who’d want him. To _me_. Do you have any idea what he meant to me?” 

 

Emma laughs, her voice wet. “I’ve been in the nursery. I’ve got an idea.” She comes without beckoning, sinks down beside Regina and wraps her arms around her knees. “I would have wanted you to be his mom, you know that, right? I know you were…some kind of sadistic queen, I don’t know. My parents have been telling me stories since we broke the curse.” She looks uncertain again, _what does it make me if I just don’t want to care?_ and then defiance settles in. “You would have been a great mom anyway. You would have been perfect.”

 

She doesn’t realize she’s crying until a tear streaks down her face and Emma is brushing it away, is pressing a chaste kiss to the corner of her mouth and whispering _I love you_ into her cheek. “I love you,” she breathes. “I haven’t said that to anyone in so long and I’ve said it to you three times already.” 

 

“I love _you_.” Regina kisses her, then shifts away to regard her. “And…a seventeen-year-old girl in prison is not the same as fully capable woman. You’re not the same person you were ten years ago, and if we did find a way to bring him with us–“ 

 

But Emma is already shaking her head. “Regina, you don’t understand what I…you named him _Henry_ ,” she says, and now she’s crying, too, head bent and fingers clutching at the edge of her boot. “I spent my whole life waiting for my fucking soulmate to cross my path so I could have a family and I gave him away before he even had a name,” she chokes out, and slides her left foot over her leg and yanks off the boot.

 

Regina has to crane her neck to see what she knows suddenly will be there, the name _HENRY_ in tiny block letters. “No,” she whispers, and it’s all clear, it all makes sense at once, years of craving all the wrong people and blaming an act of rebellion for Henry’s loss. _Not rebellion_.

 

They say that your soulmate can be someone unexpected, that you can share your soulmate with another, that it doesn’t always spell out romance. They say so many things that Regina had stopped listening to them decades ago, but as she slides off her shoe and bares her own ankle, shows Emma the _HENRY_ etched into her own ankle, she remembers them all in a rush of final understanding. 

 

Emma stares at it, her finger brushing against the letters as the tears dry up. “What does it mean?”

 

It had been rebellion, maybe, a battle against destiny they’d waged victorious, made of choices and defiance. Emma’s, to send him to her. Hers, to name her own soulmate. “I don’t know. Maybe we were always meant to be a family. Maybe we made it for ourselves.” 

 

Emma whispers, “But he’s gone now.”

 

An unexpected wind sweeps in through the humidity, and Regina shivers and swallows a dry sob before it can erupt again. It’s a nightmare, it's  _unfair_ , but she’s long ago learned that fairness is a luxury and can’t be found or sought after. And there’s a new little boy now to whom fairness is just as alien an experience, a new little boy to look after and care for here. “He’s gone now,” she agrees somberly, and grasps Emma’s hand.

 

* * *

 

Regina falls asleep with both her hands locked into someone else’s and Emma’s other hand wavering near the boy’s mussed-up hair (she never touches it though, just watches him and hurts), but by morning Emma’s let go and is curled against her stomach and the boy is…

 

Gone. Regina sits bolt upright. “Emma. Emma, wake up.” 

 

“What’s going– the kid. Where’d the kid go?” Emma is stumbling to her feet, casting about wildly for a sign of him, and Regina freezes. She’s babbling aloud, she realizes a moment too soon, talking about Pan and Neverland and Henry all in one breath, and she doesn’t even notice that she’s called the boy Henry until Emma is seizing her by the arm, yanking her up-  _We have to go, he went this way, Regina, get a grip!_ \- and they’re following broken branches to a stream, the boy’s coconut shell lying on the banks of it.

 

“He went to get water and Pan took him,” Emma announces unnecessarily. “We have to find Pan.” 

 

Regina is still shaking, her mind like quicksand and images still flying through her head, and Emma fills up the coconut and splashes it into her face. Regina jumps, but her mind clears. “We follow the river,” she says. “Pan’s compound will be near water.” 

 

They’re both stumbling too much, exhaustion and panic slowing them down, and they don’t talk. They don’t look at each other but their hands are joined tightly, Regina’s right in Emma’s left, and Regina finds strength in that. 

 

It isn’t much. It isn’t enough to survive losing another almost-son (She’d once so desperately wanted a child that she’d tried to kidnap one herself, and he’d grown up to hate her. Hasn’t she suffered enough for it?), but it’s keeping her anchored to the ground, keeping her moving so she won’t float away into new emptiness. “If he’s gone–“ she starts.

 

“He’s not gone.” Emma does better in crises once they start moving, once she’s given a goal and can move toward it. Regina does better with a target to destroy. “Pan needs his heart. And you yank them out of people’s bodies, right?”

 

Her eyes narrow. “Oh, yes.” She settles into what Emma had given her, a lifeline. A glimmer of the murderous intent that had kept her going for so long. And Emma casts her a sidelong glance that indicates that, yes, she’d done it on purpose.

 

She’s overwhelmed with all of it, grief and rage and gratitude and love, and she presses onward anyway. _I’m going to save you. I’m going to murder Pan and anyone working with him and I’m going to save you_. _We’re going to save you._  She stalks forward, marches onward with Emma until they hear voices at last.

 

* * *

 

Pan’s compound is set up like someone who’s never had a true threat to his land. There are boys arrayed around the edges, but they’re distracted with swords and campfires and don’t look up when Emma loudly steps on a branch right behind them. There are no guards, no walls or protection, and there’s no sign of Pan or the boy. 

 

Still, they get in close enough to hear one of the taller boys talking to the others, his eyes wary but missing them in the underbrush. “He’ll be back in no time,” he says. “He’s taken the spare to Skull Rock with Michael and John.” 

 

_Spare_. Regina seethes in silence, Emma’s eyes narrowed dangerously beside her, and Regina finds her hand again. There’s an answering squeeze, and then another, more urgent one. Emma mouths, _behind us_. Regina turns. 

 

There are three rowboats in a line at the curve of the stream where it empties into the ocean. And, not far away, an island with a prominent rock structure shaped exactly like a skull.

 

_Bingo_. They sit huddled together in one of the boats, each of them manning one side, and Regina takes comfort in Emma’s shoulder pressed against hers. “If it’s heart magic,” she says, the thought striking her. “It’ll have to be willing. An unwilling heart doesn’t…retain as well.” She feels sick thinking about this with the boy, remembering so many hearts, snatched from bodies out of impatience and never returned.

 

She’s spent the year in a crisis of faith, torn between goodness and the stark world she’d reveled in until then, but in the darkness of Neverland comes new understanding, new remorse. Faced with a new threat, all she can see is what she’d wrought when she’d been worse than Pan, and she puts it aside for the moment to vow with chilling determination, “We will destroy him.” 

 

“We might not have to,” Emma says, glancing at Skull Rock. The light in the stone flickers then stabilizes, like a fluorescent light in a bad storm. “It looks like the power’s going out.” Emma echoes her thoughts and takes them a step further. “What do you think he needs to recharge it?” 

 

“Our boy’s heart.” Regina rows faster and Emma matches her pace. “And without the magic of Neverland, Pan will no longer be forever young.” 

 

They run through an outer corridor, move a wall aside and slip through the edge of a cavern when there they are, Pan and the boy standing together in front of an enormous hourglass resting atop a pile of skulls. The boy’s feet are secured with a chain to a nearby lamp, and Emma takes a step forward.

 

“Wait,” Regina whispers, eyes tracking Pan’s movements. “There are supposed to be two others, aren’t there?” 

 

“Michael and John,” Emma repeats the names they’d overheard. “Let’s give it a minute.”

 

Pan is talking to the boy, who remains stubbornly still, eyes fixed on the ground. “Come on,” Pan cajoles. “You have a chance here to do something special. To save this whole world.” 

 

The boy hesitates for a moment, then shakes his head as though rejecting Pan’s promise. Pan’s eyes darken. “What are you waiting for? Those two women? They aren’t going to help you. They’ll drag you back to their world and then send you off to someone else when you get to be too much work. It’s what they _do_.” Regina shakes with fury and barely notices to seize Emma before she charges forward. 

 

The boy is listening now, his gaze fixed upon the same spot on the ground. Pan races onward. “Do something good today,” he coaxes the boy. “Change the world. You are worth so much more than a toy to be cast aside…or starve slowly in this room,” he says, the threat dressed up as an afterthought.

 

The boy hangs his head in final defeat and reaches into his chest. Regina cries out in a whimper, too low for him to hear her but loud enough that there’s a movement behind them and Emma is suddenly moving between her and two men she recognizes immediately.

 

She’s memorized all their features, watched grainy security footage of them thousands of times and stared at their faces for days, consumed with fury and despair. She knows them even ten years later as the two men who’d stolen Henry, and here they are now.

 

_A father?_ The boy hadn’t known. The men who’d kept him alive over the years, priming him for sacrifice with Pan, they hadn’t been fathers. He has no mother. And he’s just old enough to have grown up in another world and then have stopped aging here for a few months. “Henry,” she says in dreamlike realization.

 

_Henry._ It’s really him, of _course_ it’s him, she’s known him and loved him from the start. He’s theirs, uncontrovertibly so even now, too similar to them and so different and the last piece to make Regina and Emma both whole again. 

 

She’d dreamed of a soulmate as a child but instead she has _them_ , the boy with no soulmate and the woman who shares one with her, and she finally understands. She knows what it means to see someone and love them at once, what it is that has poets write epics and artists create masterpieces, what this love is that consumes all three of them.

 

After all these years, she’s found him. Her heart swells and her head hurts at this, this _finally_ , this encompassing relief even at their mortal peril. Henry is here. Her Henry. _Their_ Henry. And she loves him with all her heart.

 

Emma doesn’t hear her, distracted in a scuffle with one of the men, but someone else does. The boy jolts, hand dropping from his chest, and raises his face to stare at her. “How do you know my name?” he asks, and looks startled at the sound of his own voice. 

 

Pan lunges at Regina in a rage and Regina spins, pops out of sight and back in behind him. She launches a fireball at him and he swats it aside, brandishing a knife and running at her.

 

He trips over a small leg, stumbles for a second and Henry- _Henry!_ - raises his little fists and slams them against Pan’s back, punches his arm until he releases the knife, and Regina yanks Pan forward just as the hourglass drops its last grain of sand and the room’s lamps flicker again and go dark.

 

The light in Pan’s eyes fades and he begins to age rapidly, shifting from a boy to a man to an aged, wizened creature, faster and faster until he’s something like a living corpse, head thrown back weakly in Regina’s grasp. She drops him in disgust as the skin stretched across his body begins to peel back, and he withers away into dust right in front of them.

 

The island shakes and Emma takes advantage of it to gain the upper hand in her own battle, punching one of the men and kicking the other until they’re on the ground and she can run to Regina and Henry.

 

“Kid! Regina! Kid!” She’s rushing toward him and he staggers forward, bright-eyed even as the ground shakes beneath them and his leg is chained to a lamp. “Oh, god,” Emma says, fiddling at the restraint until it pops open. She presses her hands to his cheeks and Regina watches Emma fall, just like that, surrender to the love she’d resisted for days and wrap her arms around him at last. Her eyes are shut and she’s holding on with all her might and Henry laughs, “Emma! You’re going to suffocate me.” 

 

Emma’s eyes pop open in surprise. “Kid,” she says, brow furrowing. “Did you notice that you’re talking?” 

 

“Not kid,” he corrects her. “Henry.”

 

“Henry.” Emma looks over at Regina, her head moving from side to side in disbelief. Regina nods with shining eyes, stepping over Pan’s remains to fling her arms around Henry, too. Emma has silent tears glittering in her eyes as she frees one arm to wrap Regina in her embrace and announces, “Pan is a fucking liar, Henry. We’re…we’re not going anywhere.” 

 

“Anywhere?” he repeats, but he’s grinning like he _knows_ , he hasn’t doubted them at all. “Because I have this bean…” He fumbles in his pocket and extracts a clear magic bean. “One of the boys slipped it to me. They’ve been keeping them in secret in case this whole using-my-heart thing failed and we had to run.” He beams at them, looking very pleased with himself, and Regina takes a step back to gaze at him in wonderment.

 

“What is it?” he asks, and Emma lays a hand on his shoulder, can hardly keep herself from staring at him as Regina sways against her arm.

 

He’s _Henry_. He’s their soulmate, the boy Emma had given to her and she’d named herself. He’s an integral part of a family that _hasn’t_ been until now, just two bruised and battered hearts within a world that has never been theirs. He’s the child she’s been mourning for a decade and he’s finally here and ready to come home.

 

She can scarcely believe it and she suspects Henry will have even more trouble believing any of this once they’re back in their realm. _What could have been. What is. How we found each other._ The life he could have had with her- and she craves to hear everything about how he’d suffered until now, how he’d been left voiceless in Neverland until he’d heard her call his name. She wants to know everything about him but she thinks she already understands who he is when she's seen defiance and resilience and love and all that makes up the soul of all three of them. 

 

They have forever, all three of them, and Regina doesn’t plan to let it slip away ever again.

 

Henry tosses the bean. They hold hands, the boy who had had no name and the girl who had had no family and the girl who had believed in fairytales until life had intervened, and they leap together into their ride back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So if you're like me, you may be questioning how Regina left Neverland after drinking from that healing spring. I did initially plan to write a bit after explaining it, but honestly it seemed ridiculous to waste a perfectly good ending on a few logistics that aren't even in this fic's canon. So in case you were wondering what would happen there, Regina got home and suddenly had all the damage from her torture back, and that's when Snow called in the Blue Fairy to heal her. :)


End file.
